'...I think it (Virgins!)is a work of genius. It is so vivid, so palpably descriptive of a certain time in history and such a wonderful, frank exploration of female life and sexuality. You deserve world wide recognition.'

When a reader wrote me this a while ago, I was shocked. Yes, I did finish the book in 1982, nearly 30 years ago. Published it a year ago. But I haven't successfully marketed it. So, with the book being called 'a work of genius' I thought I should invest money. I signed up to have the book shown at seven library shows in the USA, including my homestate of Illinois, and one in London, UK. 

Let's see what will happen... 

I told myself I'd begin writing a book, The Expats (working title) this September. However, I've nearly finished publishing Travel-Ready Packing: Pack Light, Dress Right - Any Time, Any Where (http://travelreadypacking.com) by Julie Martin. So I was editing The Guitar Player & The Lady Killer and realized that way too much of the book was still in my head and not on the paper.  So I have to do a major re-write on GP & LK again.

GP & LK was written from 1984 to 1989. Virgins! was written from 1978-1983.

Virgins! is my third book. First was The Chicagoans, my MFA thesis, which I rewrote-edited five times MORE after I received my MFA. Why? I wanted it to be good, and without the time pressures, I was able to rewrite it well. It was a bit less than 200 manuscript pages. Then I wrote another book, but sadly, I used beer to motivate myself to write, and another beer to keep me writing and HALF of that book was on the page and half still in my head: The 13th Vampire Mission (good vampires vs. bad vampires war to save the Earth from invasion of evil UFOs). I started that in 1976 in San Francisco and finished it in 1979.

With Vampires ruined from drinking, I vowed not to repeat the same mistake with Virgins! This wasn't always easy when friends in L.A. offered me very good coke for free. Did it once, but the whole body hangover was so horrendous, I said no way when offered more coke other times. I also learned if I smoked my friends' excellent marihuna, I couldn't write a coheren't paragraph for three days. So I swore off all drugs and alcohol while finishing the book I had started three years earlier. (Actually, I had 95% given up drinking alcohol in 1978 when I was 28. I should have done that when 20). 

I'm delaying a five year commitment to another book. Which is foolish. Back in grad school, I once said. 'I'm only happy making love or writing, and when I'm not doing one, I'm doing the other.'

Since I'm not making love, and I'd like to be happy again, writing another book should work. Let's see.... 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1129978/How-faceless-amoral-world-cyberspace-created-deeply-disturbing--generation-SEX.html

 

How the faceless and amoral world of cyberspace has created a deeply disturbing... generation SEX

By Olivia Lichtenstein
Last updated at 8:47 PM on 28th January 2009

 

 This article is eloquent about the sexual world of young people today. Sadly, there aren't enough voices, enough teachers, enough mentors or good examples for young women to understand the exploitive nature of their sexuality.

 

 The male hierarchy has co-opted women's freedom. Using the media, men have waged a war of terror against women, convincing them that being free sexually (i.e. giving it away freely, with no ties, no commitments, no emotions, etc.) is for their own benefit. 

 I don't live in the States now. When I first heard of hip-hop/rapper music I was appalled at the anti-female 'holes' and other garbage talk. Finally, Ophrah Winfrey had a show that was a rare voice saying, 'STOP'. 

Parents who allow girls and boys under 16 to date one-to-one, IMHO, are responsible for the actions of their children. 

 Maybe financial realities will sober up adults and teenagers alike. One can only hope.

Even Linda Lovelace (Deep Throat) says that she had her female organs removed probably because of her sexual promiscuity – too many partners. Eva Peron (“Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”) died from cancer. She had started her climb up the political ladder through prostitution. Now it’s been proven that a major cause of cervical cancer is promiscuity – too much foreign sperm.

Another research showed that mutual promiscuity can lead a female to reject (or be allergic to) a lover’s sperm when she hopes to become pregnant. The woman’s body simply says, “No!” to any sperm trying to fertilizer an egg.

More recent research seems to indicate that male promiscuity can lead to female cancer, i.e. when Kutcher (That 70s Show) stopped sleeping around for the love of one woman, Demi Moore (ex-wife Bruce Willis), he just may also become the stimulus for her getting cancer. 

Of course, most of these studies were done before condoms played a large part in ‘safe sex’ (As if sex can ever be ‘safe’.) So this article may just be scare tactics to discourage promiscuity, i.e. Do as I say, not as I did. 

Then again, the emotional toll of promiscuity, over the long run, is pretty damaging. 

What do virgins want to know?

 When I was ten years old, and kept reading about ‘intercourse’ in the Old Testament, I wish my mom, who was in the kitchen ironing, told me a lot more than she did. She described intercourse as making love, saying it was when a naked man put a small part of his body into a naked woman, and ‘As God made it, intercourse is beautiful, but what men have done to it, it can be horrible and ugly.’ I asked ‘How? What do you mean?’ She refused to say more as she finished one of my dad’s shirts and pulled another from the to-be-ironed basket. Father said nothing.

I went away thinking, ‘Yuck! I want to wear clothes!’ I imagined two white-sheeted people with two holes in the middle ‘having intercourse’.  As a teenager, I learned the joys of kissing and petting, so eventually I no longer thought of intercourse as ‘Yuck!’

 What I wish my mom had said: 

1. Value your virginity. You can only can share it with one person, and only once.
2. Your virginity is your door to the world. Who and what you open that door to, especially for the first time, you will carry with you your whole life.
3. Wait until you’re over 21 and are engaged to be married. (When you’re younger, your mind, feelings, attitudes, plans and goals are all evolving. If you allow a man into your body and heart too early, you stop yourself from learning who you truly are. You may fall victim to a common female behavior: altering your deepest self to please a man.)
4. Don’t make love simply out of curiosity, peer pressure or other social reasons. It’s bound to be boring and hurtful in the long run in ways you can’t even imagine.
5. Nearly all young males associate sex only with physical pleasure; their own and not yours.  They rarely associate sex with love.

This is a biological reality, driven by hormones. Some women feel the same way, but most women’s hormones push them towards love. Most men’s hormones push them towards sex. Wondering why or hoping to change the situation has been futile for thousands of years. Accept it and deal with it.

1. Men value ‘No’ and you when they keep pestering you for ‘more sex’ – intercourse. 
2. A man’s actions are more important and honest than his words.
3. There is more than one ‘right’ man for you. Every man will offer you problems. Choose the problems you can live with, not ones you think you can change.
4. Avoid alcoholics and drug users, especially men who experiment with needles or cocaine. If you think the person is only experimenting or a social user, watch them for a year. Don’t join them in their behavior. Experimentation may lead to later adult abuse or addiction.
5. Pay attention to how a man earns and spends his money.
6. No one comes from an ideal family. Nor are all dysfunctional families the same in intensity and damage. When dating, the man’s relationship with his family is important. Family problems are often genetic and involve social learning. If from a dysfunctional family, has the man improved his social network, his behavior, understood his family’s impact on him? 
   
   
   What I wish someone had told me about how to do it the first time:

1. Use birth control that has a 99+% rate of success. Both you and your lover should use birth control.
2. Both you and your lover should agree beforehand that if either wants to stop, you will.
3. Plan your time. Have no pending appointments (test the next day, having to go to work in an hour or so…).
4. Choose the place carefully. Make sure it is private, safe and comfortable. A romantic atmosphere helps a lot, including music.
5. Use lots of foreplay – touching each other’s bodies. Explore. Do not be afraid to talk during any part of lovemaking.
6. Expect it to hurt the first time. Your lover must stimulate your body so your natural lubricant will allow entry without pain. Your lover must then move slowly and carefully if your hymen isn’t broken (using Tampax breaks the hymen). Your lover’s penis may actually feel like a sword or knife during penetration, and thus it is important to keep eye contact so he can read your emotions and remember to be gentle (sometimes a man will become lost in his own experience and forget or ignore his partner). If it hurts, your lover should stop.
7. If your vagina does not release a natural lubricant – use more foreplay until it does. Trying to have intercourse with a dry vagina hurts you and your lover. Using lubricants do not help you two communicate. It just helps your lover with easier access.
8. For both, it is best to touch each other to orgasm before penetration. Why? It is common for virgin men to have 3-5 orgasms the first time, but it is equally common for male virgins to suffer from premature ejaculation. For your lover, a manual orgasm overcomes his inner emotional problems and makes his next erection last longer, for mutual pleasure. For you, it prepares you for both the physical and mental processes you may experience during intercourse. During this time, you may change your mind and want to stop. Or he may change his mind and want to stop.
9. If anything feels wrong, stop! Talk about it. If necessary, delay the process. Sleep together and later begin again. If you feel like stopping again, stop.
10. If you are not satisfied in any way, say something immediately. Once you both are out of bed, it often becomes impossible to talk about what happened in bed. And yes, getting a man to talk in bed is very important. Usually, after an orgasm, men become talkative (just as it’s commonly known women do). The afterglow of making love is a wonderful shared time in which to talk about life.
11. A marvelously entrancing extended lovemaking session can be arranged by having a nearby table laden with healthy and delightful food and drink you both enjoy, especially enough water to replace the juices your bodies use during lovemaking.
12. Be prepared for an intense emotional experience. You and your lover may both be surprised by the emotions making love creates. Do not deny them. It is best to talk about them when they happen (see No. 9 above). You may be surprised by your or your lover’s emotions. You may even be shocked by these emotions. Listen, talk, cry, joke, laugh and love again.

When I was about seven or eight in the 1950s, I told my mom and six sisters that when I got old, “I’m having a face lift!” They laughed. I insisted. I was dreaming of a luxury way out of my league. I figured by the time I needed one, science would have invented some wonderful new way to do it, and do it cheaper.

Nowadays, it is much cheaper than back then, but it’s still cut, pull and bleed. Then suffer. Internet prices ranged from $5-10,000. After four years saving overseas and feeding my pension plan, I figured I better get rid of my frown lines.

Norman Mailer had the two deep thought lines over his nose, often hidden with glasses. However, on a woman, walking down a street, even with glasses, men would order me to smile. Customs officers would order my luggage inspected. Students feared angering me. Overseas job applications demand a photo. I needed a new look. The author of the First Wives Club died from her facelift when she was 54. She was a smoker. I was 54. I was a light, social smoker. I stopped smoking.
 

Imagine my shock to learn from a Seattle hospital that a facelift was a three-operation procedure, with a three-operation price: $10,000 each for the ‘brow lift’, ‘the eyes’ and ‘the jowls and neck’.  Thirty thousand. 

A friend who had had a tummy tuck recommended her doctor. His facelifts, in his clinic, cost just a tad less than $10,000. If I became a ‘bleeder’ I’d be transferred immediately to the hospital a few yards away and billed for expenses used to save my life. I prayed that would not happen since such hospital bills would kill most anyone.

 
The doctor was required by law to read me a list of 30 questions for each of the three procedures. I had to answer 90 questions and sign on the dotted line three times, that yes, I knew this would not change my life, my marital status, earn me a higher salary, and I could die. Three times. One for each of the three operations. By the time I was in the chair to be anestisized the next day, I was terrified. 

Maybe the Nigerian doctor who entered the room with a white coat with a blue stain by his pocket where his ink pens had leaked was a famous Nigerian scammer? I told him and the anastheologist who was readying the needle how terrified I was. “We can stop the procedure now, if you like,” the doctor said. 

I looked at them both in surprise. That was an option for a nano second.  “Just because I’m afraid, doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it.” I said. “I’m just as afraid of needles as I am of the whole operation, so don’t pay attention to me. Just get that needle in me and knock me out, okay?” 

I paid the extra $150 to have the nurse come home to my tiny summer studio sublet. I don’t know why she fed me if she knew I was going to vomit. But she removed the original bandages, replaced them, fed me Vicodin pills and left. I was sadly surprised I didn’t experience any kind of illegal high with this infamous drug. 

I had two plastic bulbs hanging near my ears, to drain the blood away. I couldn’t read the small print on telephone cards to call my friends. The doctor said that should clear up in a few days. I covered my head and the offending bulbs with a black scarf when I walked to the corner grocery store for some food. I overhead one renter complain, “This isn’t a hospital.”

A friend was totally unprepared for my new look: bandages and bulbs collecting blood. She escorted me in a taxi to the doctor’s for the removal of the two bulbs and bandages. THEN she was happily shocked at my new look. So was I. 

I looked weird! Not at all like myself! My face had changed shape from a square-ish kind of thing to an oval with a high forehead. My eyes were finally visible! The thin line of the lid outlined the eye, no longer hidden by layers of fatty tissue. Later a friend noted with my nose lifted a bit, my nostrils were now visible. And the frown/squint/thought lines had vanished! 

Was it worth it? Someone forgot to tell me that caffeine mixed with pain pills produced uncontrollable diarrhea. Thus with a new face, and only a month of recovery, sleeping with frozen blueberries on my forehead, I began a new job in South Korea, a country I had lived in earlier. I replaced the blueberries with a blue plastic eye contraption which I re-froze the next day. I needed the icy cold to soothe my aching head and forehead so I could sleep. 

Without Vicodin, by the time I was dressed and ready for work, I couldn’t open my apartment door. So back to the meds. I could now even walk the 20 minutes to work and teach classes. When I ran out, a local doctor said Korea didn’t have that medicine, but he could prescribe what was given cancer patients. 

At the school, I was given two huge books for one class and told to write a syllabus for tomorrow. In a new academic environment, with new stress, and constant rushing to the far away bathroom to prevent diarrhea accidents, life became precarious. One time I reached the bathroom, but not the toilet. When my 97 year old father said he was dying and, “Come home,” I did.

Much later I learned that mixing caffeine (Pepsi or Coke a Cola) with strong pain pills nearly always causes diarrhea.

Four years later, I look at my face and I’m pleased. Knowing what I do now – I’d do it again. But it was scary. And it didn’t take ‘six weeks for recovery’. It was more like three months.  And if I had known about the mix of caffeine with the medication, the whole experience would have been much more tolerable. But yes, I’d do it again. But I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. It’s too scary and the risks are too high.